And then, bam, reality hit her right between the eyes and these bizarre creatures from a nightmare had snatched all the triumphs away.
But it wasn't a nightmare. Even that consolation was denied her. Improbable as it was, the Dopey was real, the whiskered Doc was real, the space aliens truly did exist and they had taken Pat Adcock prisoner. It was almost more than she could take in-the astonishment, the incredible strangeness of it all-but the wonder was diluted by fear. And diluted again by discomforts of several kinds, including her increasingly urgent need to go to the bathroom.
It was all more than she could handle, because nothing like this captivity had ever happened to Pat before. She had never been in jail. She had never in her life been restrained against her will in any way at all, unless you counted the times her nanny had made her sit in a corner for some five-year-old's wickedness. She wasn't prepared for it, and she didn't like it at all. She didn't like the six-sided chamber that was their prison, like a scaled-up honeycomb cell the size of a backyard swimming pool, or the bright mirrored surfaces that reflected their own naked bodies whichever way they looked. She didn't like being naked, for that matter-at least, not under these circumstances. Pat was not a prude about her body, but she had always been selective about whom she displayed it to. She especially didn't like the fact that there were no private spaces inside the cell, not even a toilet. About that she was, indeed, quite prudish.
She was not the only one suffering from affronted modesty. That dedicated sexual athlete, Jimmy Peng-tsu Lin, sat with his back against a wall, his bloodied head down in shame, hugging his knees to his chest to conceal as much of his privacy as possible. Dannerman and the general were less obvious in their discomfort, though the general, she saw, had a lot to be discomforted about. Lacking the built-in corsets of his uniform, his body sagged and bulged in unexpected ways. Both men, she observed, did their best to turn away from whomever they were talking to. Only Rosaleen Artzybachova seemed unaffected- very likely, Pat thought with interest, because she stripped down pretty well, for a woman of that age. All that exercise appeared to have paid off. Pat resolved to try a bit more of it for herself when she was back in her real life…
If she ever was.
There did not seem to be a very high probability of that. They were well and truly captured, all five of them.
They were all responding in the same way, too. All five of them-well, all but Jimmy Lin, who was fully occupied in nursing his bashed head and his embarrassed nudity-had immediately begun to check the mirrored wall, centimeter by centimeter, looking for a doorway, perhaps, or at least some sort of gap. There wasn't any. "I guess we're stuck here," Dannerman said at last, and no one disagreed. All they could do was ask each other unanswerable questions and complain-"pissing and moaning" was the term Dannerman had used. It wasn't a good choice of words. Pat was uncomfortably aware that they had so far really done only the moaning part.
From all the questions a few facts were established early. They certainly were not on Starlab anymore, because gravity pressed them down as it had on Earth. They almost certainly were not on their own Earth, either, because of that same gravity. It was Rosaleen Artzybachova who noticed it first, but then they all agreed. They seemed to weigh a little less, pressed a little less heavily on the soles of their feet when they stood, perhaps could even jump just a bit higher, than they had for all their previous lives.
"Also," Rosaleen went on, "you will notice that we are breathing quite normally."
Pat frowned. "Yes?"
"Which means that the atmosphere here contains approximately an Earth-normal partial pressure of oxygen. I imagine the rest is probably nitrogen. Some inert gas, at any rate; and not helium or carbon dioxide, because we would know it if so, from the effects on our voices or our alertness. All the other inert gases are comparatively rare, so I believe," she said thoughtfully, "that it must be nitrogen." She reflected for a moment, then added, "The temperature is a bit warm-more like North Africa than New York, I would say-but still in a livable range."
Jimmy Lin looked up at her to make a face. "So, Dr. Artzybachova, put it all together and tell us what we need to know. Where are we?"
"Not on Earth, of course," she said at once. "Perhaps we are on a planet, I am not sure of that, but in any case not a planet of our own solar system-too much gravity for Mars or Mercury, not enough for any of the gas giants. And, of course, not on Venus, because the heat would have killed us at once. There are other possibilities. Perhaps we could be on a spaceship undergoing constant acceleration, but I doubt that also-I believe we would hear the rockets."
"If they use rockets," Dannerman offered.
"A good point," Rosaleen agreed. "But I think I do hear something. Perhaps motors somewhere? It doesn't sound like rocket engines. So we come back to the one clear fact: we are not on Earth."
Of course, that question was not seriously asked in the first place. They didn't really need much proof that they weren't on Earth, because the proof was right before their eyes. Nothing on Earth was like their cell, and nothing on Earth looked like the creatures who had disrobed them here.
There was argument about that, too: What were the creatures? Were they really the Seven Ugly Dwarfs from the space message? Rosaleen polled the group. Jimmy Lin had no opinion on that, partly because he was distancing himself from the others with his embarrassment and his sore head, and mostly because, he said, he had spent much of his recent time in a place where they did not pay a great deal of attention to such cartoons, namely at the Jiuquan space center in the People's Republic of China. Martin Delasquez didn't think their captors really resembled the figures from space, either, but there was no doubt in Pat's mind at all. It was simply statistically unlikely, she was sure, that two unrelated sets of such bizarre creatures could turn up at once.
She noticed that Dannerman took little part in the discussion. He was restlessly checking the cell out, not saying much, until abruptly he announced: "I'm hungry."
So, Pat realized once he mentioned it, was she. And wanting other creature comforts, too. "And I wish I had something to drink," she said wistfully, thinking of the silver decanter of ice-water always on her desk.
Rosaleen said, "I'm sure we all feel the same way, but the less fluid you take in the less you will have to discharge. Which we all must do." She looked around at the others, almost smiling. "We do not have a choice, you know. Shall I be the first?"
She paused for a moment, but no one answered; no one had a useful answer to give. "Very well," she said, and walked purposefully over to one wall, where she squatted down without further remark.
"Oh, hell," Pat said unhappily. "Hey, guys. At least you could all turn your backs." Jimmy Lin raised his head long enough to laugh sourly, glancing at the mirrored walls. Dannerman paid no attention-very conspicuously and politely paid no attention. He redoubled his study of the mirror wall, but by the sense of touch only, his eyes half closed against any impolite reflection. Martin stood by him, watching.
"There's nothing to see in the wall," the general pointed out.
"Nothing I can find so far, anyway," Dannerman said obstinately. "But those goddam bug-eyed monsters walked right through it, so there has to be something."
Rosaleen finished her task matter-of-factly and stood up. "That wasn't the wall where they came in, anyway. They came through the one next to it, where Pat's standing."
Which started another argument, even more pointless. Which wall? How could you possibly tell which wall, anyway, when they all were identical? There was no mark of any kind on any of them, not even a seam where two panels joined. Pat ran her fingers wonderingly over the smooth, warm surface herself. It looked as though it should be glass-hard. It wasn't. As she pressed her fingers against it the tips actually entered the wall, faintly dimpling it as they might a surface of modeling clay, but they penetrated no more than, perhaps, a millimeter or so. She tried harder, finally pressing with all her weight. No good. She could get fingernail-deep into the surface and no farther. And she could find no sign at all that it had ever opened up to let the extraterrestrials through. If she hadn't seen the creatures walk right through it she would not have believed it possible.